The Last Trick
James and Alec returned home, irritation radiating off them in waves. Janssen hadn't said a single useful word, choosing instead to taunt them, calling Alec a traitor and mocking them both before clamming up entirely.
"What the hell was M thinking?" James muttered as he keyed in the code for their apartment, "He knew Janssen was playing games. That was a complete waste of time!"
"Maybe he was hoping we'd intimidate her into cracking" Alec replied grimly, pushing open the door, "Too bad that woman seems immune to intimidation. I'd almost be impressed if she weren't working for the other side".
Stepping into their apartment, both men… stilled.
The apartment was dark, eerily so, with every single light switched off - a stark contrast to Q's usual habit of leaving at least one lamp on in every room, despite Alec's constant teasing about the electricity bill. For him to have turned off all the lights despite knowing they'd be returning while it was still dark out was…
"Something's wrong" Alec murmured, his hand automatically reaching for the hidden knife strapped to his forearm.
James nodded sharply, tension sparking in the air, as he unholstered his gun. They shared a brief, assessing look, before moving further inside, both on high alert. Bond took the dark corridor leading to the bedrooms and bathroom, while Alec checked the kitchen and main living area.
It wasn't until he reached the sitting room that the full extent of the situation hit him.
The couch was overturned, the coffee table smashed to pieces, and Q's laptop lay cracked on the floor. A lamp was toppled over, the bulb shattered, and there were faint scuff marks on the floor near the couch.
Alec slowly stepped around the wreckage, his heart pounding as he assessed the chaos. His stomach twisted in fear as he rounded the couch and stopped cold.
A body.
Jerking forwards, he flipped the man over and-
It wasn't Q.
Relief hit him first, so strong and so sudden that it threatened to steal all breath from his lungs - but it was followed quickly by a cold, gnawing terror. The dead man was dressed in black tactical gear, his mask skewed to reveal a lifeless face. Blood pooled beneath him from a hidden chest wound, seeping into the carpet.
"Bedrooms' clear" James called as he returned to the living room, "But there's no sign of Q, and the cats are in hiding. He would've told us if he was going somewhere".
"There's a dead man over here" Alec said, his voice hoarse, "One of… three or four, I'd say, based on the wreckage. Looks like Q got one of them before they got him".
James crouched by the body, his sharp eyes scanning it quickly, taking in the discarded gun near his right hand - not one he recognized - and the second discarded gun a few feet away - one he did.
"It was a planned attack. This wasn't random. Someone wanted him. Someone took him".
"Ебать!" Alec growled, running a hand through his hair, his mind racing, "But why now? And how? Who knew about tonight, about us being out?!"
He rose, his fists clenching. "Doesn't matter. They underestimated him. He fought back. He's still alive".
"You don't know that!" Alec snapped, his voice cracking. James stepped closer, his voice low and firm. "Yes, I do. Q's too damn smart to go down easy. We're going to find him, Alec. And whoever did this… they're going to regret the very second they ever even heard his name".
"... We need to tell the pack. We need to figure out who did this. We need to find him".
His partner nodded, before bending down to retrieve Q's laptop, his expression darkening as he saw the crack jutting across its screen, sending the surrounding pixels into a kaleidoscope of colours.
"Text the others" he said, reading the distorted email sent by R not minutes before they'd left, "We'll start with this. Whoever took him… they're already on borrowed time".
As Alec messaged the group chat, James rang M, updating him as quickly and as curtly as possible. Then they herded Q's cats into their carrier and left, leaving the door to their apartment open for the forensic team Mallory was sending.
They didn't worry about being burgled - the only thing they truly cared about had already been stolen from them.
Ten minutes later, they were back in HQ, expertly slipping through the chaos that was now Q branch, wanting to get from point A to point B as smoothly as possible without having to fend off frantic questions from panicked minions.
They stepped into Q's personal office, James clicking the door shut behind them, muffling the frantic energy of the branch behind them. Alec was squeezing Paco just that little bit too tightly, although the cat continued to purr loudly as if understanding his need for comfort right now.
The air in the room was thick with tension, the kind only killers understood. Outside, MI6 was in disarray, frantic analysts and engineers scrambling to make sense of what had just happened, but in here, the polished veneer of professionalism cracked and fell away.
The others were spread out around the office, looking wide awake despite the late hour, with Duncan and Milli standing on either side of the door; Charlie, Edie, and Alexis taking up a protective perimeter by the window; Jake and Charlie sitting on the very edge of the couch, ready to leap up at a moments notice, while Saif leaned back against the wall behind Q's chair.
Alec finally loosened his grip on Paco, allowing the cat to leap onto the desk. He landed lightly, tail flicking as he surveyed the gathered agents with eerie intelligence. Yana soon joined him, cautiously creeping out of the carrier James set on the ground and opened.
The room was deathly silent.
The air crackled with something dark and unsaid, the kind of rage that made them more dangerous than any enemy they'd faced. Someone had hurt what was theirs. Someone had taken what was theirs. Some suicidal son of a bitch had stolen the most precious thing in the lives of the nine most dangerous creatures on the planet.
"I'm gonna kill them".
It was Jake who finally spoke. His face was pale, a sheen of sweat betraying the price of defying medical orders, but his eyes burned with barely leashed fury.
"I'm gonna kill them" he repeated, voice rough from exhaustion and pain. "Whoever took Q. Doesn't matter who. Doesn't matter how many. Doesn't matter why. I will slaughter them if it's the last fucking thing I do!"
Duncan exhaled sharply, shifting his stance, ready to catch Jake if he collapsed. He'd been there, when he'd signed himself out of medical too early and against Arkov's advice - until the doctor found out just why, exactly, he was so adamant about leaving. Then the man had simply shoved a bottle of industrial-strength painkillers into Jake's hands and ordered Duncan to keep an eye on him while they got Q back.
"You're not dying before we find the brat, idiota. If for no other reason than he'd never fucking forgive us".
"Seconded" Alexis said, her fae-like features now burning with an intensity more suitable for a witch, "But if we start ripping throats out too soon, we might not find him in one piece".
"Mallory's already mobilizing resources" James replied, "but we all know this is on us".
His voice was low, deadly, as he met each of their gazes, the unspoken promise hanging in the air. They would happily burn the world down to get their Quatermaster back.
"So where do we start?" Edie finally asked.
He turned to Duncan and held out the badly dented and cracked laptop. "Q was working on this before we left. Think you can get anything off of it?"
"Of course, I fucking can!" he snapped, yanking it out of the blond's grasp, "But only if that moron moves!"
He pointed at Saif who, instead of taking the bait and bickering back as he'd always done before, calmly stepped out from behind Q's desk, allowing the shorter man to sit down and connect one of the external monitors to the laptop.
Duncan's fingers flew over the keyboard, the external monitor flickering to life as he worked to extract anything useful from Q's damaged laptop. The rest of the room remained tense.
"The timing of all this is very… convenient" Charlie said carefully, "Whoever took him didn't have to contend with two double-0s when they did so".
"That's not convenient, that's planned" Alexis countered, "You mentioned a dead guy in your text - was there just the one?"
Alec nodded. "If I had to guess, I'd say there were three, maybe four guys in total. Enough to subdue someone like Q".
"But not enough to subdue you two as well" Edie countered, "Whoever did this is clearly smart - smart enough to know that sending in four guys to take down two highly-trained alpha hitmen and their genius omega would only ever end in a bloodbath… So why didn't they send more guys?"
"Because they knew" James said, his jaw clenched, "They knew we'd be gone. They knew Q would be there alone".
"But who told them?"
He frowned, idly petting Yana as she butted her head against his hand for attention. "M knew, obviously; he was the one who told us to come in".
"And if he knew, then Moneypenny did too" Saif added, before quickly ducking as Edie threw a stapler at him, "Hey!"
"Eve did not betray Q!" she snapped, "Or us, for that matter!"
"I'm not saying she did!" he protested, raising both hands in peace, "Just like James isn't saying that M betrayed the little menace either… but we need to cover all bases, Edie; you know that".
"All of our tensions are high right now" Charlie said softly, "But we can't afford to argue amongst ourselves, so let's not take anything personally, alright? For Q's sake?"
They all glanced at each other, every alpha's eyes a different colour, shade, and shape, but all promising swift and vicious retribution to whoever had taken their omega.
"... Fine" Edie finally said, forcing her shoulders to drop, "Fine, alright, so we have M, Eve, and ourselves, obviously. Did anyone else know?"
"Tanner might've" Alexis replied, "He always tends to know more than he lets on".
"Okay, so, more or less all of the executives then" Alec finished, "But I can't imagine any of them wanting to hurt Q, not even as a means to hurt us".
"But who else would know you were leaving your flat at one in the morning?" Edie asked, arms crossed, "I mean, that's not exactly considered normal behaviour by civilian standards, is it? Could anyone have overheard your phone call with M?"
James was already shaking his head. "No. He called Q's mobile which is probably the most secure channel on this planet and we left directly after getting the call".
Duncan huffed, still focused on his work. "Phones work both ways, pendajo!"
Saif frowned, straightening up. "You think someone overheard M?"
"I've said before, and I'll say again - Mallory isn't our fucking M!"
"Q did say that we have a mole" Charlie said, shifting somewhat nervously, "Could they have been listening in?"
"To the Head of MI6's private call made from his super secure office in the most high security building in Britain?"
"... Okay, so, maybe not".
"But those are our only two options!" Alec snapped, beginning to pace, "The only people confirmed to know about us leaving Q alone were M, Moneypenny, and Tanner".
"So unless one of them is a traitor-" Saif began.
"Which they aren't!" Edie cut in sharply.
"-then someone must have overheard the conversation or accessed classified comms!"
Silence stretched as the weight of that implication settled over them. Either way - they had a traitor in their midst.
"... There is a third option".
For the first time that night, Milli spoke and they all turned to where she stood perfectly upright next to the door of the office, so still and flawless that she looked more like a fine porcelain doll than a human person.
"A third option?" Jake asked, his knuckles white from where he clenched the bottle of tablets in his hand. He was leaning more heavily against the back of the couch now, and Duncan gave him a concerned look, causing Alexis to leave her perch by the window and take the seat on his other side, offering silent comfort.
"Yes" Milli said simply, "You are operating under the assumption that it was the phone call that alerted Q's kidnappers to him being alone".
"As opposed to-?" Alec pressed, stopping his pacing next to her.
"Colonel Janssen".
"But she's in lock-up" Charlie said with a frown, "Basement sublevel three. She has no access to a phone or- or a computer that she could use to contact anyone".
Milli gave one, measure blink. "She does not have to in order to send a message".
James stilled, and Yana immediately yowled at him to pet her again. He ignored the pleading because- because Millicent was right, Janssen didn't need to contact anyone directly about them leaving Q alone to question her - she had a mole to pass on the message instead.
"You are the only two agents to have interrogated her since her imprisonment" Milli continued, "It is not difficult to presume that, should she suddenly wish to speak, it would be the two of you that M would bring in to listen".
"She didn't want to talk" Alec breathed, "She wanted to get us alone".
"To get Q alone" James corrected, his expression grim, "And we fell right into her trap".
A heavy silence followed.
"Well, fuck" Alexis suddenly said, "It makes too much damn sense when you put it like that".
James's fingers curled into fists at his sides. "Q was right - it was too bloody convenient. We knew it, but we still went. We played right into it".
"If this was a setup, then Janssen knew exactly what would happen" Saif said slowly, "She knew M would send for you. She knew Q would be left alone. She knew just how long to keep you both occupied for someone to take him… But who told her when to do so?"
Charlie turned back to James. "You said M rang Q's phone? Did you hear what he said?"
"Q put it on speaker - not that Mallory knew, of course; he messaged the both of us separately too. But he said that Janssen was finally ready to talk and that she only wanted to talk to me and Alec".
"Did he say why now?"
James gave his partner a questioning look, relieved when Alec started to nod.
"Yeah… Yeah, he did. M said that Janssen started causing a ruckus so one of the guards checked on her to make sure she wasn't dying or anything. That's when she said she wanted to talk, and the guard passed the message onto M who then contacted us".
"Do you know who that guard was?"
They both reluctantly shook their heads, but Edie already had her phone in her hand, sharp nails almost frantically tapping the screen.
"I'll ask Eve - she definitely knows".
"It's too easy" Jake said, leaning against Alexis now instead, "Too clean... Too obvious… It won't be the guard; whoever did this had to know we'd question them first. They wouldn't have left such a blatant loose end like this".
James nodded in agreement. "You're right. And besides, if whoever told Janssen that tonight was the night is the same person responsible for all the previous incidents, then they can't be a guard. Q believed that the mole was in his own branch, that the evidence wouldn't line up otherwise. That guard won't know anything".
"Still, it'll do no harm to question them" Saif countered, maintaining eye contact with Paco who had crouched low and had started to swish his tail back and forth, "Any chance we can check the basement's security feed? See who paid Janssen a visit lately?"
"I'll ask Eve" Edie replied, still typing, "And if she says no, I'll hack into it myself".
"If we find out whoever told her when to talk yesterday, we'll have found our mole".
"Not necessarily" Alexis said, one arm wrapped around Jake's shoulders, the other drumming patterns on her knee, "We don't know when the mole told Janssen the plan, after all. They could've given her the date months ago!"
"Or Q's kidnapping tonight was a last resort" Alec shot back, "He's been attacked before, remember? It was only a few weeks ago that his bike tyre was punctured and those three bastards tried abducting him!"
"Alright, so, let's use that as our starting point then" Saif reasoned, "If that was a failed kidnapping attempt, then tonight couldn't have been planned before it. We just have to go through… what? eight or nine weeks of footage? It'll be a lot of work, yeah, but basement level three is usually deserted aside from the guards on duty, so finding the mole shouldn't be too difficult to-"
"Or" Duncan suddenly interrupted, his scowl lit up by the computer screen, "I could save you all the fucking trouble".
They all shared a brief, tense look, before lunging forward to crowd around behind the desk, fighting to see whatever it was that the man had found.
It appeared to be an email thread - albeit a very short one. Q had started it, sending an email to R back in June after he'd been attacked cycling home that night. He'd asked her to casually look around for any of the materials that had been used in the slow-acting puncture device someone had hidden inside his tyre and see if they'd been left on anyone's desk in the workshop lately.
He'd also told her not to let any of the double-0s get a hold of her suspects list, lest they take "justice" into their own hands, which caused Edie to clasp her chest above her heart and happily whisper, "He knows us so well!"
R had replied, agreeing to do so and briefly mentioning that she'd already narrowed it down to a handful of TSS workers and she'd compare them to security camera footage to narrow them down further. Q had replied to that email a few days later, telling her to put everything on hold except the most crucial Ourumov-related tasks, in the wake of his worldwide threats.
She'd only sent the results of her investigation early this morning, right before James and Alec had left their flat to question Jansen. It was a rather lengthy email, explaining how she'd found the specific metal and rubber tubing he'd asked her to look for on only one of his minion's desks and that the minion in question had caused trouble for Q in the past, which only further cemented R's theory of them being the mole.
"Ugh! Get to the point already!" Saif complained, reaching around Duncan to grab the mouse and scroll down to the bottom of the email where finally, finally, there was a name.
They all stared at it, some of them feeling confused, others feeling stupid for not putting two and two together sooner. Either way-
"I've said it before and I'll say it again" Edie declared, her dark eyes furious, "I should've ripped more than his t-shirt".
The double-0s could only nod in agreement, James and Alec both swallowing hard and sharing a look, before turning back to read the name of the mole of MI6 one last time.
Daniel Barrett.